iOS, Android • The holidays are over, it’s 2018 and we’re all probably going to die in a nuclear apocalypse but, on the bright side, digital board gaming just wrapped up its best year ever. Will 2018 come close to 2017’s grandeur? Unless we get a surprise release of Through the Ages 2: Electric Boogaloo, probably not, but there are reasons to be optimistic about digital board gaming this year beginning with Acram Digital.
Over the past few days we’ve visited the red pine-lined paths of northern Wisconsin and the less romantic strip mall-lined streets of Rockford, Illinois. I’m just about ready to be done with the holidays. Lucky for me, there’s only another week before the kids go back to school. Maybe I’ll get lucky and fall into a coma in the next few hours. Due to our busy travel schedule over the past weekend, I wasn’t able to log in and take care of the Readers’ Choice awards that you voted for all last week. I’ve amended that today and, after the jump, will share what you, the Stately Players [son of a bitch… -ed.], thought were the five best mobile games of 2017.
Well, the holidays are over. I have happy children so absorbed in their new Switch or Xbox games that we, as parents, have ceased to exist. This means they’re leaving us alone, which is great. It also means that my wife’s blood pressure is approaching catastrophic levels as they ignore her pleas to finish chores. I’m just sitting here writing and staying out of it. Thank god for Stately Play. When we posted our top games of 2017 last week, Tof’s number one game was absent. It’s the holidays and they live a billion miles away from Milwaukee, so get over it. Anyway, we didn’t want to leave Tof out, especially considering that their list has been unique and eye-opening and full of games I wasn’t aware of. Today is no exception with the bonus that I have the ditty from the trailer stuck in my brain from now until the end of time. Thanks, Tof.
Here we are, what all of us think are the best games of 2017. My selection, I’m sure, will completely shock you. Okay, probably not. That said, we have some nice diversity amongst our writers, so I promise it won’t just be five of us telling you how great Through the Ages is. Oh, damn, spoiler! ONWARDS!
When I posted our number two games of 2017 yesterday, you might have noticed that Tof’s choice was missing from the list. That was due to one of two things: either Tof lives about as far away from me as a human can and still have feet on Terra firma so our timing gets mixed up sometimes, or I really just wanted to use the world “penultimate” in another post title. I’ll let you decide. [Spoiler: it was the second one. -ed.] Without further ado, let’s see what Tof’s second best game of 2017 is.
iPad, PC/Mac/Linux • Yesterday saw one of the biggest surprise releases to ever land on the App Store, Civilization VI. Yes, THAT Civilization VI. The one with Sid Meier in the title and Boromir doing the voice-overs. The one that takes days to finish a game, with full tech trees, barbarians, city states, and enough different Civs to fill a tiny UN. It’s the real deal, with a real price, and it’s on the App Store.
We’re rolling now, with tomorrow being the big reveal of our number one games of the year. For today, you’ll have to settle for our second best games but you should know that I’m all warm & fuzzy because I got to use the word “penultimate”. That doesn’t happen very often. ONWARDS!
And we’re back with our countdown, nearing Friday’s reveal of our #1 games of the year. I’m sure the suspense is killing you! Or not. I can dream. Anyway, ONWARDS!
iOS Universal, Android • Sigh. Look, I’m all for new games on the App Store, but at some point we need time to, you know, actually play some of the games on the App Store. Can we slow down a bit? Today’s new addition and must-try is Lotus from Renegade and Dire Wolf, the same pair behind another board game puzzler, Lanterns: The Harvest Festival. Like that game, Lotus has a zen-like quality to it and is more of a relaxing card game than cutthroat experience. It also has flowers, lots of flowers.
Due to me waking up late yesterday, I didn’t manage to our #5 games out on Monday when I should have. To make up for my sloth, today we’re posting both #5 and #4. This, if you haven’t figured it out by the title of the post, is #4. ONWARD!